Brown, a Wall Street critic who has campaigned againstbanks' physical commodity activities, urged the two to betougher on the banks, ahead of their confirmation as members ofthe Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

"The CFTC must take a more aggressive stance to rein inthese activities that threaten end users and consumers withhigher commodity and energy prices," Brown said in a statementafter meeting the two presidential nominees.

The CFTC is facing a shake-up this year after the departureof Gary Gensler, its headstrong former chairman. PresidentBarack Obama has nominated Timothy Massad, a Treasury official,to succeed him.

Brown said he had met with Chris Giancarlo, a seniorofficial at swaps broker GFI, and Sharon Bowen, apartner at law firm Latham & Watkins in New York, the two othernominees to become CFTC members.

Brown sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, the bodyresponsible for the CFTC, which will question the trio in ahearing to confirm them at the futures and swaps regulator. Nodate for a meeting has yet been set.

Banks like JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley havereduced their physical commodity activities under pressure fromregulators and politicians, after a rapid build-up of thelucrative business on Wall Street in the 2000s.

The Federal Reserve, worried about the impact a catastrophesuch as an oil spill could have on a bank it oversees, isplanning to issue new rules that would make it less attractivefor banks to be in the business.